I needed a brief moment to think of a suitable way to describe the feature for this posts title, as its pre-release name is Prevent installation of an application if a specified program is running, not as catchy as its in-console name of Installer Handling, which I decided not to use as it isn’t descriptive enough, and may not be the final name for the feature, and decided upon Recognise Deployment-blocking executables,which is not much shorter if I admit.
To get this feature into ConfigMgr Current Branch, I’ve recommended that customers install the PowerShell Application Deployment Toolkit (PADT), which I will still continue to recommend, as it is feature-rich, but now we have a simple implementation of one of the features PADT has, and it is coming down the feature-pipe being previewed initially in the Technical Preview of ConfigMgr.
Nothing is guaranteed, it could for some bizarre reason not make it into the daylight, but I’d expect to see this by the next series of releases of Current Branch.
The idea for this feature came about due to a UserVoice entry, which got 1,525 votes (at the time of publishing).
It doesn’t take much to setup a repro of this feature, to see it in action, once you have Technical Preview 1612 installed, which Niall Brady EM MVP has covered in this guide here.
Simply setup a deployment of an Application, open the Applications Deployment Type and find the new Installer Handling tab:
Select Add, then enter the name of the Applications executable filename:
Once that’s done, pop the Deployment Types changes into the database by selecting OK
This will then make its way down to the Client via Policy, and the new ConfigMgr 1612 TP Client-code will utilise it when initiating a deployment, as shown here:
I’ve launched the LogLauncher.exe executable on the target system before the deployment is launched from the new Software Center:
Saddle up:
It begins downloading the content, completes and then begins deployment, which then immediately fails with this message:
OK’d the message, closed the executable and rerun, completed successfully:
I had a nose around the logs, I don’t think they are logging activity around this feature yet, but I can see state messages going up to the MP, which are probably the error result for the deployment, followed by the success once I’d closed the executable and retried the deployment.
Eventually we’ll see this arrive in Current Branch, a built-in mechanism for stopping a deployment from getting underway if the User already has the application open. Handy.